By Sarah Tully

Over the past three years, California has more than quadrupled the number of early childhood centers being evaluated with a new rating system, but that is still just a fraction of the state’s publicly subsidized programs.

The U.S. Department of Education released Tuesday a progress report of the 20 states, including California, that received federal Early Learning Challenge grants starting in 2011. The grants, part of the Race to the Top program, were meant to improve publicly funded early learning programs with systems to rate their quality, as well as track health screenings and assess children’s readiness for kindergarten.

via State expands preschool rating system, but aims to add more | EdSource.

By Louis Freedberg

To the disappointment of many child care advocates, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill Friday that would have set a timetable for providing state subsidized preschool for all low-income 4-year-olds.

Assembly Bill 47, authored by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, would have set a target of June 2018 to provide access to state subsidized preschool to all low-income 4-year-olds who are not already enrolled in transitional kindergarten or state preschool. Whether that timetable would be met would have been contingent “upon the appropriation of sufficient funding in the annual Budget Act for this purpose.”

via Governor vetoes bill setting timetable for expansion of preschool | EdSource.

By Richard Carranza

The month of June marked transitions for many of our students, but few more so than the very youngest. This month, thousands of 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds completed their first years of formal education in San Francisco Unified. Research suggests they will be significantly better prepared to succeed in school because of their high-quality preschool experience.

What these children don’t know – and it should be invisible to them – is that they are on the leading edge of our district’s strategy to align pre-K–3rd grade instruction. Our goal with this approach is to shrink a stubborn achievement gap by aligning primary school teaching to a formerly separate pre-K system. If we are going to bridge the gap, we have to start earlier, and that early work must be connected and coherent with the work in the grades that follow.

via How to build a bridge from pre-kindergarten to third grade | EdSource.

By Sarah Tully and Michael Collier

Lawmakers are proposing to add hundreds of millions more dollars to childcare and preschool initiatives than what Gov. Jerry Brown proposed in the state budget, but the increase is likely to meet resistance from the governor.

The Assembly and Senate budget committees passed proposals in recent weeks to increase the amount of money and spaces for childcare, boost voucher programs and give more money to centers that watch over children.

The Assembly’s proposal adds $605 million for childcare and preschool programs, while the Senate’s plan adds $332 million. Both proposals would substantially increase what Brown proposed in his revised budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year.

via Legislators propose boosting preschool funding | EdSource#.VW3iMGfbLGg#.VW3iMGfbLGg.

By Donna Beth Weilenman

Planning Commission to meet Thursday to revisit day care approval

Benicia Planning Commission will hear an appeal Thursday of a decision to allow a large family day care to operate in a home at 579 Cooper Drive.

Interim Community Development Director Dan Marks initially heard a request to open the day care March 10 from Kristi Claverie and her supporters. He also heard objections from neighbors who worried that it would increase traffic on their street and cause other problems.

Acting as the city’s zoning administrator, Marks examined points raised on both sides before deciding March 20 to approve Claverie’s request to provide day care services for up to 14 children.

via Neighbors appeal preschool ruling.

By Susan Frey

Advocates for expanding preschool to low-income 4-year-olds were disappointed with the 4,000 additional enrollment slots proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown in his 2015-16 budget released Friday.

The new slots are for the 2015-16 school year, but Brown had already agreed in the last legislative session to provide those slots, said Ted Lempert, president of the advocacy group Children Now. During that same session, an agreement was reached to eventually provide preschool slots for all the state’s low-income children. Another 31,500 slots at a cost of about $300 million would be needed. But the agreement was not specific on how many years it would take to reach that goal.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the Department of Finance, said the agreement addressed not only the number of slots, but also reimbursement rates for preschool providers, incentives to providers to improve the quality of preschool, and funding for a full day of care in addition to three hours of preschool, removing one of the barriers to working families enrolling their children in the program.

via Preschool advocates seek more funding | EdSource#.VLVSNmctHGg#.VLVSNmctHGg.

By Lisa Fine

A vast majority of California registered voters believe attending a high-quality preschool is important to a student’s future success in school, according to a Field Poll conducted in partnership with EdSource.

Of the 1,010 registered voters surveyed, 61 percent consider a high-quality preschool experience “very important” to a student’s later success and 22 percent said it is “somewhat important.”

“What these findings show is a clear recognition of the critical importance of high-quality education in the lives of children, and to their future success,” said Deborah Kong, president of Early Edge, a preschool advocacy group in California. “With 83% of the public believing that a quality early experience is critical, there can be no mistake that this is a core public value.”

via Poll shows support for high-quality preschool | EdSource.